April Monthly Review

April was a bittersweet month: I found the motivation to start putting in the grind again, and then Black Friday occurred.  In any case, I now have a balance on Carbon Poker in the amount of $126 and will be using this roll to begin grinding the $6 games for the month of May.

May Goals:

[ ] HUSNG Membership through Carbon ($1 rake, lol 4 games)
[ ] 400 games
[ ] 25 Up / 17 Down BRM
[ ] Get quality review time in (sweats, HH reviews, etc)

Here are my overall results for April:

Live Poker Begins

Quick update:

Finally got about 1.5 hours of live pokering in last night.  More or less broke even (down $25 in a 1/2 game, net).  I was playing against too many solid regs at a local card room and figured out pretty quickly that it was not my game.  Not one to shy away too much, I knitted it up for a few orbits before I had to go (got involved in some largeish pots, but broke even obv).

This weekend I think I'm going to try to make it to the casino and get a session in against all the old folks and see how I do :)

Live BR: $300 - 25 = $275.00

In the online front, I've setup a UseMyWallet account and have cashed out my $50 roll on Cake along with depositing another $60 to boot.  As soon as the Cake cashout clears and I have the $110 I'll be depositing it at Carbon and begin grinding the $5.75+.25 turbo HUSNGs.  It's a bit short rolled for them but not by much, just hoping to run well and I'll be off to the races.

After $1 rake paid I'll have a HUSNG membership (4 games, easy enough!) and after $100 rake paid I'll have a Premium membership.  The $100 has to be paid within a month, so it likely won't happen until May.  And 400 games played is no super small feat for me so I'll have to be on my grind for sure.  That premium membership is definitely worth it, not to mention I'll be getting 35% rakeback on top of that.

Hoping to begin the HUSNG grind again here shortly!

Only a few games in yesterday and didn't run well again.  It's all good I'm still pretty up on the month overall, just sucks to do poorly when starting short rolled on a new site.

Speaking of which, I'm trying to deposit ~$100 on Carbon to take advantage of the new HUSNG.com promotion.  My Visa has been declined (I'm guessing due to their processor, which is odd since it's never been declined before).  Likewise I've tried direct debit of my checking account and it too has been declined.  If anyone has any suggestions for getting money on to Carbon from the U.S. please shoot me a PM.

In any case,  here is a graph of the month overall (all sites):

Cake Update

Well the Cake software is definitely different than FT/PS, but I'm getting used to it just fine.  Though I must say the traffic is pretty darn low, I think there were 2500 people online today at prime tourney time.  I'm starting to think I may have to throw some money on Carbon poker and grind there as well, though I don't know that their limits/structures are quite as nice as Cake, I'll have to look into it.

In any case, I haven't played that many games (only 8).  I lost 2 of them as I was multitabling unexpectedly and was trying arrange and setup my tables while playing 2 unknowns.  I've since updated my PlaceMint to handle the Cake tables I play so everything should be gravy going forward.  I may end up multitabling on Cake a bit more than I did on tilt/stars primarily due to the fact that there is such low volume anyways, so open sitting while grinding one game seems to make more sense.  My main issue so far with multitabling is that I like to take a lot of notes about players, and it's hard to do that while playing 2 or more tables.  I think I may grind some play money games on Stars to get more practice at it cheaply.

In any case, I think my BR is $62.40 in 8 games, think I'm like 5-3 (stupid rake).  Here's an updated graph of my month so far (all sites):

Black Friday

Well yesterday will always be known as "Black Friday" in the poker community.  Basically the DOJ has, for all intents and purposes, shut down Full Tilt and PokerStars to U.S. players for the time being.

Not one to be deterred by such things, I've created an account on Cake Poker and deposited $60 to see where I can go with it.  I'll be grinding the HUSNGs still so wish me luck!  I've also started a 2p2 thread to follow progress, it can be found here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/poker-goals-challenges/bankroll-building-husng-cake-poker-1021517/#post26077494

BR: $60

Cheers

Another Quick Update

Well the run-good (and low volume) continue for another day.  I'm considering making a last half April challenge to try and grind out my first stellar $10 bonus by starting at the $2.20 HUSNGs on Stars.  However, this would take 589 games played and it's already halfway through the month.  If these were turbos I might stand more of a chance, but being that they're reg speed games it becomes much more difficult.

I've toyed around with the idea of multi-tabling to get the volume in, but being that I'm not familiar with multi-tabling HUSNGs I'm not sure how wise that would be.

In any case, I'm going to think it over for a bit today and come to a decision, maybe try to get a solid session in tonight/tomorrow morning and see where I stand.  With a 10 BI roll for the $2.20's currently I stand a decent chance of going busto still, but then I could always redeposit (but who wants to do that?!).

Updated monthly graph overall (Tilt & Stars):

Consolidated Database

I finally got to consolidate my desktop & laptop databases so I can provide a graph of my overall year thus far.  Going forward I'm probably going to largely just be playing on my laptop so hopefully everything will remain consolidated.

You'll notice the big downswing in the middle, this was my shot attempt at the $6.25 turbo which I definitely ran bad at (about 5BI's under EV in ~30 games).  It's not that ridiculous under EV, however when you're shot taking with only roughly 20 BI's (probably a little less at the time) then it's pretty disastrous to the BR.  That's OK though, that's how I gotta roll to grow the roll quickly.

Hoping to get a solid session in tonight and update afterwards.